


winners & losers

by platoniccowboy (transcendencism)



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Missing Scene, Scene Rewrite, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 10:40:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30087837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transcendencism/pseuds/platoniccowboy
Summary: If he were a smaller man, a desperate man, and some enormous brute came in demanding a debt he couldn’t pay back, could Arthur have given up his family? He thinks of Dutch, as insufferable as he is at times. He thinks of Hosea, the steady hand that’s guided him, held him, and supported him. He thinks of John, who ran out on them once before and Arthur still isn’t convinced he wouldn’t do it again. He thinks of sweet, young Tilly, with her golden heart. He thinks of little Jack, whose life has barely started. He thinks of all the others back at the camp, the people he shook and beat Downes for the money to support them.Micah would call it surviving. He’d say that there are winners and losers, and today Arthur’s the winner.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	winners & losers

**Author's Note:**

> this is a reupload of this fic; did some minor editing and scrapped the ending b/c my hatred of strauss got in the way of keeping arthur in-character. was gonna write a different ending instead but my energy for this fic vanished into thin air so i ended it on his journal entry instead. if there are some errors in said journal entry, sorry :( had to look up the journal entry online and arthur's handwriting is really hard for me to read

It’s a small, modest house. Most of them have been. The paneling is weathered and stained from years and years of heavy rain, the roofs sagging, and the porch starting to dip on one side. It’s a poor man’s home, a desperate man’s home. Beside it is an equally modest garden with, as far as Arthur can tell, two kinds of crop. He don’t know much about plants, but he figures they look healthy enough. At least the house will be fed.

In the garden, Arthur spies the bent form of a man raking the soil. Arthur adjusts his hat atop his head and pulls Frostbite to the hitching post before dismounting, swiftly tying the reins around the post. The stallion huffs quietly at him, and he pets his neck before moving away towards the garden.

“Mr. Downes!”

The man snaps up ramrod straight, and his fingers coil tighter around the rake, his white-knuckled grip shaking. Downes is a mouse of a man, shorter than the rake he clutches so tightly, with big, beady eyes that appear as though they’re ready to pop right out from the fear.

Arthur approaches the gate. Downes swallows. “That—that’s me. What do you want?”

It’s the song and dance Arthur has followed several times before now, a performance in a vain attempt to give up the debt owed, though he knows already there’s not enough money to give. There never is when you loan to the desperate. He casts a short sideways glance at the house again, then he roots his boots in the dirt and lets his trigger hand linger next to his holster.

“You owe me money.”

Though he thought it impossible, Downes’ eyes get even wider, bulging out at him as his mouth flaps like a fish. “Oh—oh, n-no, sir, no—I’m—”

Arthur puts a hand on the gate and begins to push it. Downes scampers back. “We ain’t a charity, Mr. Downes.”

“I—I know, sir, I know—”

The gate creaks as it swings open.

“ _Please_ , I will get that debt paid, I—I just can’t yet.” The rake shakes in his hands, and were Downes a stronger man, Arthur wagers it’d have snapped with how tightly he’s gripping it. As Arthur nears him, a shrill cry of “ _please_ , I-I-I don’t have the money!” squeezes itself out of Downes’ small, wobbling mouth before he swings the rake at him. Arthur catches it easily and roughly pulls it out of Downes’ hands, tossing it aside. Downes’ face contorts in horror as the rake clatters onto the soil before his eyes snap back to Arthur.

“Threatenin’ me, are you?” The snarl rumbles deep in Arthur’s throat, and in one stride he launches a fist into the side of Downes’ face, sending him tumbling into the dirt. The man cries and quakes, rolling himself over again so that he can keep his eyes on Arthur, shuffling back. It only takes Arthur another step to keep pace with him and drive his boot into his side, eliciting another pained sob. “Where is the _money_ , you bastard?!”

Bone-shaking coughs rattle through Downes as he puts his hands up over his head, ducking his face down. Arthur leans down and grabs a fistful of his shirt, pulling him up just enough to punch him again. The sallow skin and brittle bone of Downes’ nose yields to Arthur’s knuckles, and there’s a twitch of guilt in his gut when it cracks. Downes _wails_ , only to be choked again by another cough. Arthur screws up his nose as the man pleads brokenly, unintelligibly. “I—please, sir, I have a _family_!”

Arthur’s fist hesitates from where it’s pulled back to his shoulder. He doesn’t dare let himself look at the house. Looking at Downes sprawled beneath him, only held upright by Arthur’s hand, isn’t any better. His stomach curls in disgust at the way the man shakes, nearly coughing himself to death. Growling, he grabs Downes by his suspenders and hauls him out of the dirt, shoving him against the fragile boards of the fence. Downes’ face is colored with a riot of deep purple and red, blood dripping from his nostrils and smeared in his mustache. His nose is left significantly more crooked than it’d been before Arthur broke it, the skin of the bridge split and running red. Glassy, wet blue eyes stare up at him, so full of terror that Arthur nearly drops him like a hot pan.

He pushes forward. “You borrowed money from my business partner Herr Strauss,” he enunciates each sentence by shaking Downes by his suspenders, “you _owe_ him. You took the money. He wants it back. What’s not to _understand_?!”

Downes coughs in his face. It’s wet, slimy. Arthur is only briefly stunned before hurriedly wiping it off with his sleeve, fixing the man with a glare and giving him another good shake.

“Where’s our _money_?”

Quietly, breathlessly, Downes whimpers, “I don’t have it.”

Arthur hisses a breath out between his teeth, and he risks a glance at the house. “Sell your place.”

Downes shakes his head dejectedly, starting to slump in Arthur’s grip. “We already owe more than it’s worth.”

“Then,” Arthur sighs, adjusting his hold on the man so he doesn’t crumple to the ground, “sell your wife, or your family, or somethin’.”

Those wet, cloudy eyes turn themselves on him again. “Could you?”

“Could I what?” Arthur snarls. His patience for the mouse in his grip ran dry minutes ago, and he’s tempted to drop him—and the issue of the debt—and ride home.

“Could you,” Downes pauses to cough, and Arthur leans his face back so as not to catch any more of it, “could you sell your family?”

Arthur’s stomach turns. He grits out one last “we ain’t a charity,” before letting Downes drop to the dirt. Just as he begins to step back, he hears the door to the house swing open, and he braces himself with a clenched jaw. Turning around, he watches a woman and a young boy descend the drooping porch steps. The woman looks at him first, eyes wild and terrified, before slipping past him to the collapsed man in the garden.

“Thomas!”

He narrowly sidesteps her as she rushes past him, collapsing to her knees beside her husband, uncaring of the dirt staining her skirt. The boy—Downes’ son—follows after her, sparing a fearful glance at Arthur, before bending down next to his mother. “Oh, _Thomas_ ,” the woman whines, her voice thick with worry and heartbreak. Arthur steps back. Spying his movement out of the corner of her eye, she turns to him, face contorted with grief. “My husband isn’t well,” she pleads, “if we could just have more time—”

“Like I said,” Arthur murmurs lowly, directing his gaze at anywhere but her teary, wild eyes, “we ain’t your idea of charity.” Steeling himself, he snaps louder, “get us the money!” Then, he quickly turns on his heel to save himself from looking at the sorry lot any longer, forcefully swings the gate open, and starts towards Frostbite. The lithe Tennessee Walker nickers as he approaches, nosing at him once he’s close enough. There’s the slightest tremor to Arthur’s hands as he unties the reins and flips them up around the saddle horn. He heaves himself up into the saddle and, with still shaking hands, turns Frostbite away from the hitching post and back towards the trail. Against his better judgment, he chances one last look at the homestead.

The woman’s still kneeled down by Downes, sobbing. The choked, anguished sounds scrape her throat and make Arthur want to gallop out of there like a bat out of Hell. Her hands cradle Downes’ bloody, busted face, and tears drop down from her eyes to wet the drying blood. The boy stands straight beside her, his puffy, watery eyes locked onto Arthur.

Arthur snaps the reins and drives Frostbite down towards the path with a push of his heels. The stallion lurches beneath him, his own nerves kicked up by Arthur’s, and tears away from the property, away from the sobs, away from the poor little Downes family.

It’s not for several long minutes of hard riding that Arthur finally slackens the reins and leans back in the saddle, and Frostbite responds in kind, slowing down from his gallop to a steady trot. “Good boy,” he murmurs, patting his hand against the stallion’s neck. Still, he can feel the horse’s nerves are pulled taut like a wire, and he glances at his pinned back ears, listens to the sound of him chewing on the bit. Arthur huffs out a breath and lifts his head to the wilderness passing them by, and he looks down to the Dakota river beyond the trees. With a gentler guiding hand, he turns Frostbite off the road and cautiously down the slope.

The bubbling current of the Dakota eases the tension in his chest, and Arthur allows himself a steadying sigh as he pulls Frostbite to the bank before dropping the reins and dismounting. He reaches into a saddle bag and procures a slightly bruised apple, which gets an excited snort from Frostbite. Arthur manages a small chuckle and offers it to him. “There ya go, boy,” he smiles as the stallion bites into the crisp apple, but the smile fades when he looks at his hand. Crusted, flaky blood stains his knuckles where they’d collided with Downes’ yielding face.

Arthur’s breath hitches.

The Dakota calls to him with its leisurely rush of water; a soothing song of the running current, pushing and pulling at the pebbles that make the bank. He retreats from Frostbite’s side reluctantly, following the allure of the water until he’s kneeling down at the shore. With a preparatory breath, he lowers his aching fists into the cool Dakota; he bites back a hiss and flexes his fingers. The water peels the blood from his skin, and it dissolves from the naked eye, carried further downstream.

Arthur cups his hands and pulls them out of the river, bringing some water up with them. He splashes it on his face with a shiver, the cold water stinging and not as pleasant as it was to his hands. Still, he wipes his face, scrubbing away whatever the man coughed up on him—and squashes down the flash of concern about catching the illness that had him coughing so much. After rubbing his face dry with his sleeve, he finds himself staring into the running Dakota.

The sun at his back throws his face in shadow, but in the clarity of the river he can see his hard, weary eyes, the tight furrow of his brow, and the harsh lines around his mouth.

How had he looked to the Downes family? Arthur is not a man of small stature of any means, and over the years he’s learned the power of intimidation, could often get answers a lot quicker than a fist. When he rode in on a mean lookin’ stallion, with the brim of his hat obscuring his eyes, the sun casting his face in shadow and catching on the metal of his revolver, what did Thomas Downes think? Did he fear for himself; did he fear for his family too? Did he hope that Arthur was just some wayward traveler come to ask for directions, or was he not so naïve?

What did Arthur look like to Thomas Downes, distorted by the wetness of his bulging eyes and his incessant shaking?

When he beat him, was Arthur still a man, or had he turned into something else?

And what about the other debtors? About poor Mr. Wróbel, who could barely understand English, could barely understand _Arthur_ , and had his house thrashed and valuables taken in place of the debt he couldn’t pay. What did Arthur look like in his eyes?

_“Could you sell your family?”_

If he were a smaller man, a desperate man, and some enormous brute came in demanding a debt he couldn’t pay back, could Arthur have given up his family? He thinks of Dutch, as insufferable as he is at times. He thinks of Hosea, the steady hand that’s guided him, held him, and supported him. He thinks of John, who ran out on them once before and Arthur still isn’t convinced he wouldn’t do it again. He thinks of sweet, young Tilly, with her golden heart. He thinks of little Jack, whose life has barely started. He thinks of all the others back at the camp, the people he shook and beat Downes for the money to support them.

Micah would call it surviving. He’d say that there are winners and losers, and today Arthur’s the winner.

Arthur snarls and slams a fist into the water and shatters the visage of himself in the river; it dissipates and dissolves like the blood from his knuckles. He pulls away from the edge before the Dakota can settle back and take his form again, pushing himself to his feet and striding over to Frostbite. The stallion lifts his head from where he was grazing on the grass, and he already starts to move back to the path as Arthur hooks a foot in the stirrup and lifts himself up into the saddle. “Let’s go, boy.”

* * *

_I went to call in a loan, some farmer, local do-gooder. Think I’d seen him in Valentine before when I was fighting that big fella. He begged and coughed and sputtered and I beat him half to death. Such is life. Such is the world. His boy looked at me like I was the devil, and perhaps for him I was. The whole thing confused me. Maybe that’s wrong. The whole thing revolted me. These sad, desperate bastards, their silly expectations of life and their tawdry reality. The unkindness of existence—I can handle that just fine. But I do not love it, nor those who try to make things otherwise, I guess._


End file.
